George S. Schuyler was one of the premier black journalists of his,
or any other, day. Between his own acerbic style and being published
in The American Mercury, he was referred to as the Black Mencken.
In addition, he wrote one great satirical novel, Black No More,
and a fair amount of pulp fiction. Two of those pulp titles, The
Black Internationale : Story of Black Genius Against the World and
the sequel, Black Empire : An Imaginative Story of a Great New Civilization
in Modern Africa, are reproduced here in one volume. Written
under the pseudonym, Samuel I . Brooks, for a black weekly newspaper, The
Pittsburgh Courier, these sixty two serial installments in an
ongoing adventure story originally appeared between 1936 and 1938.

Reminiscent of Sax Rohmer's Fu
Manchu, Schuyler tells the story of Carl Slater, writer for the Harlem
Blade, who accidentally witnesses the murder of a white woman. The
black assailant forces Slater into a waiting car at gunpoint, whereupon
he is drugged. When he wakens, the murderer reveals himself to be
Dr. Henry Belsidus, leader of the Black Internationale, an elite organization
of black professionals whom the Doctor plans to lead in his mission to
liberate Africa and restore blacks to their rightful position of dominance
on the world stage. He explains that the woman had been one of his
agents and her murder was punishment for failure. It turns out that
Slater was on a list of blacks whom Belsidus planned to eventually recruit
to his cause, and now circumstances force him to choose between joining
up or being killed. He joins.

Dr. Belsidus is clearly maniacal, but he is also possessed of a compelling
vision :

My son, all great schemes appear mad in the beginning.
Christians, Communists, Fascists and Nazis
were at first called scary. Success made them
sane. With brains, courage and wealth even the most
fantastic scheme can become a reality. I have
dedicated my life, Slater, to destroying white world
supremacy. My ideal and objective is very
frankly to cast down Caucasians and elevate the colored
people in their places. I plan to do this
by every means within my power. I intend to stop at
nothing, Slater, whether right or wrong. Right
is success. Wrong is failure. I will not fail because
I am ruthless. Those who fail are them men
who get sentimental, who weaken, who balk at a little
bloodshed. Such vermin deserve to fail.
Every great movement the world has ever seen has
collapsed because it grew weak. I shall never
become weak, nor shall I ever tolerate weakness
around me. Weakness means failure, Slater,
and I do not intend to fail.

In the ensuing chapters he realizes this vision, along the way utilizing
such visionary technological wizardry as solar power, hydroponics and death
rays, and such social measures as as his own new religion, the Church of
Love. Carl Slater witnesses it all and--at the behest of Schuyler's
editors and readers--falls in love with Patricia Givens, the beautiful
aviatrix who commands the Black Internationale's Air Force. The serial
ends with Belsidus and his followers triumphant and white Europe expelled
from Africa.

Stylistically this is pretty standard fare, following the over-the-top,
melodramatic, cliff-hanging, conventions of the pulp fiction formula.
It's well written and exciting, though overwrought. What really makes
it interesting though is it's politics. Schuyler, particularly late
in life, was a conservative. He moved farther Right as he became
more vehemently anti-Communist and finished his career writing for publications
put out by the John Birch Society (see hyperlinked Essays below). Part
of this evolution entailed becoming generally hostile to the Civil Rights
movement and to African Nationalism, but apparently in the 1930's he was
himself a Pan-Africanist, especially concerned with the fate of Ethiopia
after the Italians invaded and with liberating Liberia. There's a
tendency to dismiss black conservatives as somehow self-loathing, as if
conservative values are necessarily at odds with the advancement of the
black race. And you can see something of a dichotomy in Schuyler's
writings if you take for instance one of his comments on Marcus Garvey,
of whom he was generally skeptical :

Marcus Garvey has a vision. He sees plainly
that everywhere in the Western and Eastern
hemispheres the Negro, regardless of his religion
or nationality, is being crushed under the heel of
white imperialism and exploitation. Rapidly
the population of the world is being aligned in two
rival camps: white and black. The whites have
arms, power, organization, wealth; the blacks have
only their intelligence and their potential power.
If they are to be saved, they must be organized so
they can present united opposition to those who
seek to continue their enslavement. (George S.
Schuyler, writing in the Interstate Tattler,
August 23, 1929)

and compare it to what he had to say about the success of Black Empire
:

I have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm
for 'The Black Internationale,' which is
hokum and hack work of the purest vein. I
deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism
and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination
could conjure. The result vindicates my
low opinion of the human race. (George S.
Schuyler, from a Letter to P.L. Prattis, April 4, 1937)

Taken at face value, he seems to be criticizing his black readership
for enjoying stories based on the vision he had extolled in Garvey.

But perhaps this conflict is more easily reconciled than critics would
have us believe. Throughout his career, Schuyler seems to have been
entirely consistent in his hostility towards those who sought to speak
for blacks. It is this general stance which explains his opposition
to Garvey, Communists, Martin Luther King, Malcolm
X, and so on. In Black Empire, he presents Belsidus as
quite a monster, willing to use mass murder and near genocide to achieve
his ends. It's easy to read the story as reflecting both his most
treasured dream--the triumph of blacks over racial oppression--and his
inherent pessimism about the leaders and means that would be required to
achieve that goal.

At any rate, the story is great fun and Schuyler's personal conflicts
only serve to add a few layers of tension. The reader is often unsure
whether he's writing with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek or whether
he's allowing characters to speak his own forbidden thoughts. That
you can read it on various levels merely adds to the enjoyment. There's
also a terrific Afterword by Robert A. Hill and R. Kent Rasmussen, from
which I gleaned much of the information in this review. Altogether,
it's a marvelous book and the Northeastern Library of Black Literature
is to be applauded for restoring it to print. Schuyler's reputation
among academics and intellectuals declined in direct proportion to his
increasing conservatism, but his is a unique and valuable voice, deserving
of revival.